In the three decades before the Civil War blacks and whites opposed to slavery were involved in a hidden. secret, covert effort to help slaves escape from the South and evade recapture in the North. This was called the Underground Railroad: underground as in secret, hidden or covert. The term underground railroad is a metaphor. It is an analogy. There was NOT a literal tunnel underneath the ground with tracks running through it and a train. People had secret hiding places in their attics and basements, false walls, trap doors, tunnels. Runaways might even be hidden in wells. The runaways usually traveled at night and hid during the day. The activists who assisted the slaves were called agents. Individuals who actually went into the South to help slaves escape or guided them to safety in Canada were called conductors. To hide a runaway slave was against federal law. It was a federal crime, punishable by fines and imprisonment. Participants in the Underground Railroad were practicing civil disobedience and defying the laws of their country. It is estimated that between 1825 and 1860 some 100,000 slaves escaped from slavery (Charles Christian, Black Saga, p. 100). Slavery leaked like a sieve.

[On p. 122] Vincent Harding describes an incident in Boston in 1836. Two black women runaways were at court, to be taken back to Baltimore. Suddenly a black woman of great size threw her arms around the neck of the policeman and a group of blacks rushed to the bench, and in a flash they carried the prisoners down the courthouse steps and into a waiting carriage. The two fugitives were never re-captured, and the rescuers were not prosecuted.

In November 1842 a runaway slave from VA named George Latimer was captured in Boston. William Lloyd Garrison and the abolitionists, both black and white, raised an uproar. They circulated a petition, with more than 6,300 signatures, calling for his release. They raised $400, and Latimer's freedom was purchased.

But incidents such as this heightened the tension between North and South. Black people were eroding the compromises of 1787 and 1820 with their very bodies.

Unfortunately, not all rescue attempts were successful. The runaway slave Thomas Sims was captured in Boston and returned to slavery in 1851. Hundreds gathered to oppose his return, and 300 constables had to be summoned to take him to the docks. In 1854 Anthony Burns was captured in Boston. Hundreds of angry citizens gathered at the courthouse and attempted to storm the building. One deputy was killed in the riot. Infantry units of the US Army arrived to enforce the federal fugitive slave law. After this, however, it was clear that runaway slaves could be captured in Boston only with the use of the army. This incident drove a further wedge between the North and South. Burns was the last runaway slave ever recaptured in New England. After this Southerners gave up efforts to recapture fugitives in New England.

Some other rescue efforts were more successful. In Boston, in 1851, the slave catchers had a fugitive named Shadrack. A group of free blacks and white abolitionists broke into the courtroom and spirited away Shadrack. President Millard Fillmore denounced this act, and eight men --four white and four black-- were indicted for helping him to escape. None were convicted by the all-white jury. By the 1850s all-white Northern juries refused to convict those who defied the Fugitive Slave laws. Abolitionist views were moving white Northern public opinion and consciousness against slavery.

In the same year, 1851, a runaway named William "Jerry" Henry was rescued from a police station in Syracuse, New York by a throng of more than a hundred people. Only one of the activists was convicted. Northern public opinion detested the slavecatchers, and the increasing refusal of Northern white juries to convict the lawbreakers drove a further wedge between the white North and the white South.

In 1857, in Mechanicsville, Ohio, two US marshals tried to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law. But local authorities arrested and indicted them. Subsequently federal authorities arrested the local authorities. The quarrel over slavery was tearing the house of America apart.

In 1858, near Oberlin, Ohio, a bi-racial group led by Charles Langston snatched a black fugitive named John Price from his captors. The captors included 2 US marshals. Thirty-seven of the rescuers were indicted under the Fugitive Slave Law, and two were tried and convicted in 1859. But Charles Langston was then given the minimum sentence of 20 days in jail, and a $100 fine (slap on the wrist) [Harding, p. 209-210).

The greatest figure in the Underground Railroad was a slave woman named Harriet Tubman. She was born a slave in Maryland about 1821. In July 1859 it was rumored that the slaves on her plantation were about to be sold to the Deep South. She ran away to the North. Two of her brothers became frightened and turned back. Harriet Tubman returned to Maryland more than 19 times between 1850 and 1860 and rescued more than 300 slaves, including her parents and three of her brothers and sisters. Slave masters offered a reward of $40,000 for her capture.
 
 

There were white people of conscience who helped runaway slaves. These abolitionists hid slaves in their homes, attics, barns, crawl spaces, wells. They hid them in boats crossing the Ohio and Delaware Rivers, and carried them covered up in wagons to safe houses in Delaware, New Jersey, PA.

John Rankin, a white abolitionist, helped nearly 1,000 slaves near Ripley, Ohio. The lantern that he burned every night at the front of his house was a sign that it was a safe house. John Parker, an Afro-American former slave who had purchased his freedom, secretly rowed a boat across the Ohio River at Ripley, ferrying thousands of runaway slaves from the slave state of Kentucky to the free state of Ohio. The story of Uncle Tom's cabin, written by Harriet Beecher Stowe, was based on the real life escape of an enslaved woman named Eliza Harris, who crossed the frozen Ohio River at Ripley. The Quaker Levi Coffin helped more than 3,000 runaways in Ohio. Thomas Garrett, a white Quaker in Delaware, was fined more than $5,000 for aiding runaway slaves. He helped 1200 runaway slaves. Reverend Thomas Clement Oliver was a leader of the abolitionist movement in Camden, NJ. In 1848 a slavemaster sold away Nancy and her three children. Her husband, Henry Brown, was devastated. Thereafter, he escaped from slavery. A white Quaker named Samuel Smith helped Henry Brown to escape from Richmond, VA. Smith was a shoemaker. Henry Brown got into a wooden crate, and Smith nailed it shut and addressed it to abolitionists in Philadelphia. The crate was taken by Adams Express, on the train, to Phila and then opened. The trip took 24 hours. Henry Brown then was pulled out of the crate, for which he is known to history as Henry "Box" Brown. Smith was caught, fined and imprisoned for seven years.

The most dramatic of all the acts of resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law was the so-called Christiana Riot, which occurred at Christiana, PA in Sept. 1851 (see Harding, pp. 169-172). Edward Gorsuch, s slaveholder from Baltimore, came to PA to find 4 runaway slaves who had escaped in 1849. He heard they were in Christiana, and went there to get them. He took his son, 2 relatives and 2 neighbors with him. They went to Phila. to obtain federal warrants, and the assistance of a deputy US marshal. However the black abolitionists had a vigilance committee in Phila. The Phila. Vigilance Committee was headed by William Still, and they had a spy in the federal office. When Gorsuch came to get the warrants, the spy notified the Phila. Vigilance Committee, which then spread the alarm to the Christiana vigilance committee. Every community had such a committee, so that there was a network of abolitionists.

The head of the Christiana vigilance committee was William Parker. He urged resistance. A party of armed blacks barricaded themselves in Parker's house, where the runaways were supposed to be hiding. Twenty-five armed blacks gathered outside of Parker's house, with guns, corn cutters, clubs, stones. When Gorsuch and his party arrived the blacks resisted them. Gorsuch was shot, and eventually died. His son injured. It is reported that after being shot, the black women hacked and cut the elder Gorsuch.

45 US Marines arrived to restore order, and the U.S. government charged 36 blacks and 5 whites with treason. But William Parker had escaped and was sheltered by Frederick Douglass on his way to the sanctuary of Canada. Eventually the all-white PA jury acquitted all of the accused.

In the Phila-New Jersey area the great black giant of the underground railroad was William Still. Lawnside was a station on the underground railroad, as were towns such as Swedesboro, Mt. Evesham and Mt. Holly and Bordentown. David Ruggles was an activist in New York, and Frederick Douglass received shelter at his home when Frederick Bailey ran away. Activists such as David Walker (1829) and William Highland Garnet (1843) said that the slaves would be utterly justified in rising up and killing their masters. Martin Delany (1852) asserted that black people within America were a nation-within-a-nation, and declared that if any man crossed his doorstep trying to capture a runaway slave then, he, Delany, would not let that slavecatcher leave his house alive, even if it was the president of the United States with the whole cabinet with him and the slaveholders' Constitution waving above their head. Delany preached defiance of the Fugitive Slave Law.

JOHN BROWN'S RAID AT HARPER'S FERRY

The ultimate expression of resistance to slavery was armed rebellion. In October 1859 a white abolitionist named John Brown concluded that words and the Underground Railroad were not enough. For him, the time for talk was over. The time had come for action, for deeds. John Brown decided he would attack and seize the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, VA. With these weapons, he would begin a slave rebellion. He would arm any of the slaves who would join him, and begin a guerilla war. He had 22 followers, of whom 17 were white and 5 were black. [As Harding describes on p. 213], The five Afro-Americans were:

Shields Green hanged soon after John Brown

Sheridan Leary killed at Harper's Ferry

John Copeland hanged

Dangerfield Newby killed at Harper's Ferry

Osborne Anderson escaped; fought in Civil War

The arsenal lay in a valley, surrounded by mountains. It was a natural trap. Brown took no food with him. In order that there would be no leaks or informants, he told almost no one of what he was planning. Brown did not simply take the weapons and run. He seized the arsenal and then stood and fought against the VA state militia and the U.S. Army. By the second morning 10 of his followers, including 2 of his sons, were dead or dying. Five people escaped, and seven of his party were captured and hanged.

Slavery was a daily system of institutionalized violence and degradation. By the 1850s blacks and whites in the North were resorting to civil disobedience and acts of resistance and defiance and even violence to bring slavery to an end. Slavery was created by, and lived by the sword. In the end it would take force, and violence, to end slavery. Those who live by the sword, die by the sword. And so it was with slavery.